Peabody Generator Opponents Make Late Plea To Halt Project

PEABODY, MA — Climate advocacy groups made a late — and perhaps ultimately final — push for the state to reopen the approval process for the proposed 60-megawatt fossil fuel-powered peak capacity generator at Peabody's Waters River substation on Thursday.

The Massachusetts Municipal Wholesale Electric Company Project 2015A — which the state Department of Public Utilities approved for $85 million in funding last July after months of appeals and fierce objections from opposition groups and some elected officials — is designed to provide residents in 14 MMWEC communities, including Marblehead and Peabody, with peak-capacity energy at below-market prices in the case of extreme weather conditions.

The MMWEC last spring hit a 30-day "pause" on the project, which moved through the state approval process in relative obscurity for years. The MMWEC and Peabody Municipal Light Plant made some alterations aimed at lowering the emissions impact on the surrounding communities but ultimately got the go-ahead for much of the framework for the original plan the utility said will operate approximately 239 hours per year and be 94 percent more efficient than generators across the state.

But both state and local climate and environmental justice advocates groups have kept up the fight — on Thursday citing more data it says that the generator threatens to be more expensive for consumers and risks becoming a "stranded asset" based on recent price trends in the energy industry and improvements in battery storage capacity.

"Gas peakers right now are not the only capacity resource," said Maria Roumpani, Senior Manager of Strategen, an impact-driven firm whose mission is to decarbonize energy systems. "Resource economics and climate change have progressed significantly over the past five or six years (since the outset of Project 2015A). Today, we're more aware of environmental impacts and at the same time renewable and storage energy costs have fallen dramatically, which changes a lot of the economics of the peaker."

Yet, with the state approval process essentially completed, and site planning already beginning at the Pulaski Street location, Massachusetts Climate Action Network Director Sarah Dooling allowed during Thursday's news conference that intervention from Gov. Charlie Baker or Secretary of Energy and Environmental Affairs Secretary Kathleen Theoharides is the only way to stop the generator from firing up in early 2023.

"If the Baker administration did not want this plant to be built it would not be built," Dooling said. "We are asking Secretary Theoharides to please reopen the (environmental protection) review process."

The state DPU denied MCAN's appeals for "intervening status" to argue against Project 2015A in its final approval hearings in July 2021.

"There was nobody projecting the ratepayers in the last opportunity for challenging the project," Dooling said, calling the state DPU process "incredibly flawed" and in need of reform.

The MMWEC countered in a statement to Patch that the DPU properly concluded: "MMWEC has shown that the 60 MW capacity resource will offer needed capacity as well as price stability for project participants and their ratepayers."

MCAN and its consultant groups provided data on Thursday that it said concluded the startup costs of the project will actually be about $29 million more over the first half of its projected lifetime than estimates of purchasing energy in the peak market would be over that time, and that changes in environmental law threaten to make any fossil-fuel-powered plant obsolete before then end of its 30-year lifetime because of the state's "Climate Roadmap" that says the state must become carbon neutral by 2050.

The MMWEC said the DPU did dutifully consider many of these aspects and ultimately found them not to be grounds to prevent the project.

"These reports represent more of the same as it relates to attempts to discredit the project," the MMWEC said. "In fact, these exact same issues were raised before the Department of Public Utilities (DPU) — including an attempt to submit Strategen’s first report opposing the project into the docket — but these arguments were soundly rejected by the DPU."

Because the generator received initial approval prior to the recent legislation, it is not retroactively required to undergo the environmental impact study that some state officials and the advocacy groups have urged. But the MMWEC statement said an Air Quality Plan Approval was issued Sept. 30, 2020, and constituted an independent health impact study.

Bryndis Woods, senior reacher at the Arlington-based nonprofit environmental consultant Applied Economics Clinic, said volatile gas and oil energy markets both immediately and into the future make the true cost of Project 2015A more of a risk than previous estimates.

"Unpredictable and rising gas prices pose a risk primarily to customers' bills in towns with an ownership stake in Peabody," she said. "Those fuel prices get passed through to customers. Of course in Peabody itself, but also the other towns that have an ownership stake and include a lot of environmental justice and vulnerable households."

The MMWEC refuted the financial conclusions presented Thursday.

"The project represents a long-term hedge for project participants," the MMWEC said. "The material volatility in forecasts from year to year underscore the uncertainty in future capacity prices.

"As a long-term hedge, this is only one part of a participating municipal light plant's overall power portfolio strategy, which also includes multiple renewable energy resources, such as wind, solar and hydro."

Dooling said the Peabody-based Breathe Clean North Shore remains actively opposed to the project as well — adding that a subset of that group intends a hunger strike tour of the 14 communities the Peabody generator will serve in defiance of the project beginning next week.

"It's high time for the Secretary to do their job and reopen the MEPA process for this plant and give the environmental justice communities, and Peabody and the other MLP communities, real evidence and real information about the risks associated with this plan," Dooling said.

With Baker not running for re-election, the hope may ultimately be to delay the project far enough down the road that it gets a formal review from a different administration with even more urgent climate objectives, but Dooling acknowledged the window is closing on her group's mission to stop the Peabody gas- and oil-fueled "peaker" plant.

"Time is short and action is needed now to avoid a stranded asset," she said. "To avoid more health problems for people who are going to live in the neighborhood where this peaker plant is scheduled to be built."

(Scott Souza is a Patch field editor covering Beverly, Danvers, Marblehead, Peabody, Salem and Swampscott. He can be reached at Scott.Souza@Patch.com. Twitter: @Scott_Souza.)